Hardware on Setting up a website

[Rhun]

Hi I'm doing a assignment that requires a mock hardware spec for a council website and need to know what is needed to run an internet site, hardware wise, servers, pc's etc. any help would be greatly appreciated...

 

[s0me0ne]

thats a big question. It all depends on what you want?do you need a fast connection speed for hosting files? large file sizes? linux or windows? apache or iis or something diffrent? do you want scripts like cgi? php? do you care about redondency? do you need a database for the site? how would you or do you want to backup this site...dayly? weekly? monthly? would you backup just the www root or the hole box?

IMHO the best setup would be a linux box (free), running apache (free) on something fast like a couple of ghz machine with like a gig of ram for a mysql database (free), some decent scsi drives say raid1, maybe a dlt tape drive to backup the hole site with a 7 day tape rotation so if your hacked or your machine dies in a fire you can go back day by day instead of maybe a week or data lose.

or

a home cable connection, a simple home pc, windows apache (again free) scripts installed as needed. running the dyns software which will update your ip as it refreshes. point your domain name to that. backup everything via cd burner, or not. what ever

or

hosted by your isp you point your dns to them they do all the work

or

free hosting same as above, free but maybe some ads and so forth. might not be able to point the domain to them as ealy.

hope this helps a little

 

[Rhun]

Cheers. yeah helps a bit, cos it's a council website it will run a database and require daily backup, I just wanted to know basicly what sort of hardware is needed for a business to host itself.

Like what type of server and how many pc's and what they would require and what would be needed network wise to connect them and to connect to the web.

 

[zsuatt]

it really depends on what you are gona use the server for

ive ran servers from 386s 66mhz, 16mb ram, 1 floppy disc, to serve some static webpages
to
quad xeons, 16GB ram, 400GB hd.


Generally a p2 and above should do just fine for just a web server and a database server.

I suppose you already have internet so you would probably need a switch, a few network cables and the actual server box.
If the server is really important you should really get an UPS too.

oh yes, as Rhun said, definatelly linux/bsd